Source: National Park Service director's memo, released by Coalition of National Park Service Retirees

Editor's note: This story has been changed to reflect that there are four national parks in Colorado.

Rocky Mountain National Park, which also manages the Cache La Poudre River basin, could see $623,000 slashed from its remaining fiscal year 2013 budget unless President Obama and Congress reach an agreement to stave off across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect in less than three weeks.

Alarm over the cuts has been sounded by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees concerning proposed 5 percent budget reductions for the National Park Service. Colorado is home to four national parks -- Rocky Mountain, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Great Sand Dunes -- plus seven national monuments, two national historic sites and two national recreation areas.

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"This will have ripple effects across the American economy," said Joan Anzelmo, a spokeswoman for the retired employees' coalition who now lives in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Her organization represents more than 900 former National Park Service personnel.

"And it could really impact the state's economy because it's (affecting) not only what's happening in the park," Anzelmo added. "When you connect the dots to the private sector, and look at those who do business directly with the park or the countless businesses that provide services, food, gas utilities, it really will have an unbelievable effect on the economy."

The Western states' biggest parks are, of course, facing the largest cuts. Yellowstone National Park is targeted for a $1.75 million slashing, and the budget for Grand Canyon National Park would be chopped by $1.06 million.

The budget crisis facing the national parks is just one facet of a much larger picture.

Federal facilities such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology would not be exempt. The Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. estimates that Colorado's 24 federal laboratories generate more than a $1.5 billion annual economic impact to the region.

Chris Fitzgerald, communications director for U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, could not project what the cuts might mean, in specific dollar figures, for federal facilities in Boulder.

"Sequester requires an 8.2 percent across-the-board cut for non-defense discretionary spending," Fitzgerald said. "And the White House some time ago put out numbers on what that essentially means, and it's about $38 billion worth of non-defense cuts across the board.

"Sequester is not the way to go about budget cutting," Fitzgerald added. "We can do this more intelligently. We need to use a scalpel, and not a meat cleaver."

Simply put, "sequestration" is the application of automatic, across-the-board spending cuts in the face of annual budget deficits.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is not a government facility but a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the National Science Foundation, also would not be immune.

"We are watching it closely," said NCAR spokesman David Hosansky. "Like any recipient of federal funds, we don't know what the magnitude of the cuts would be, but certainly, if there are significant cuts, that would have an impact on us."

The White House press office issued a statement Friday broadly outlining how the budget cuts would affect Americans. That release stated that several thousand researchers could lose their jobs, and that up to 12,000 scientists and students would also be "impacted" in some way.

As for the national parks, if the sequester cuts go through, about $110 million would be chopped from the $2.2 billion in the remaining seven months of the NPS 2013 fiscal year budget, according to the park retirees' coalition.

NPS regional spokesman James Doyle would not comment on the proposed reductions. He said he had been directed to refer all media inquiries to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Emailed inquiries this week to the OMB media office were not answered.

The park retirees' coalition, in a recent news release, linked to an internal memo it had obtained from NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis, instructing regional directors and assistant directors on making plans for the cuts.

"We expect that a cut of this magnitude, intensified by the lateness of the implementation, will result in reductions to visitor services, hours of operation, shortening of seasons and possibly the closing of areas during periods when there is insufficient staff to ensure the protection of visitors, employees, resources, and government assets," the Jarvis memo stated.

In that memo, Jarvis instructed directors to implement a hiring freeze, delay making offers to seasonal employees and to extend furloughs to those employees who can be furloughed, "to the maximum length allowed" in accordance with the terms of their employment.

The memo also states, "Furloughs must be scheduled in such a manner as to minimize disruption of essential services and to avoid compromising the health and safety of visitors or the protection of resources and assets."

Larry Frederick, a retired NPS employee living in Estes Park who spent the last 11 1/2 years of his 40-year federal career as chief of interpretation and education services at Rocky Mountain National Park, said the proposed cuts would focus on maintaining health and safety, while trimming back on all services that aren't "absolutely critical."

"There are families that have been coming to Rocky Mountain National Park literally for generations and having experiences with their children and grandchildren, and some of those experiences are going to be different if the services and facilities aren't the same," Frederick said.

Anzelmo is not optimistic about the cuts not diminishing park users' experience.

"The only way to come up with that (5 percent spending reduction) this late in the year is to adjust services for visitors, reducing some of those services, perhaps opening some things later than usual. Even things like campgrounds," she said. "You might choose to delay opening those campgrounds because all of those facilities are made ready for visitors with a seasonal workforce that comes on."

Although she was only speculating, Anzelmo suggested that even the annual plowing of the popular Trail Ridge Road through Rocky Mountain National Park could be delayed.

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